April 2015 | back-issues, poetry
Terrifying winter night
Plum fog drowns
the winter sky
and frost makes furniture
on the ground for insects
I stagger through the forest,
having just buried 12 possessed puppets
and 17 bloody jabots
by Ashlie Allen
Bees and ghosts
Blue hues of winter
flicker against your pale skin
I remember when you were a child
screaming in the garden
because there were too many bees
and too many ghosts
Now the garden is dead
and the ghosts and bees
reside inside your eyes
by Ashlie Allen
Cactus balloons
Her ghost whimpers
in the flower pot
as I pop balloons
against the cactus she held
the day she sighed, “Sayōnara.”
by Ashlie Allen
“Gothic colors”
The shadow of bats
through mauve fog,
the rattle of violent violin music
through skeletons and wood
I weep beneath
a dead woman’s window
as I pretend the world
is a funeral and I am a ghost
trapped in gothic colors
by Ashlie Allen
Ashlie Allen writes fiction and poetry. Her work has appeared in The Birds We Piled Loosely, Blink Ink, The Assonance Literary Magazine, Literary Orphans and others. She plans to become a photographer in the future. Her greatest influence is Anne Rice.
April 2015 | back-issues, poetry
The Gypsy
Green solar plexus envious
fastidious and plagued in dis-ease
bikes to ride past your house
eye balls on springs and wide open
glued hairs in scrapbook
voodooed photographs and bottled tears
grimaced grew cats teeth and whiskers
grew a warm layer of fur
scratched you+me on my bedpost
and voodooed that too
stole ten dollars from the grocer
stole ten persimmons and thirteen oranges
sold persimmons and oranges on the bridge
sold collages of voodooed photographs
sold tears as divinity potions
glittered the cement with golddust
grinned despite green chakras
and hid envy underneath my shawl.
by Jennifer Wesle
portrait of the lady in a big blue hat
so this squishy underbelly fleshy tender
pescanoce-nectarine tummy
your pink-white fruit
juicy
dangle gently
swaying
with the movements of limbs
arms like snake trees
long limbs
fine form of genetics
praises and salutations
to grandparents with good family planning
generations of high cheekbones
thick shiny hair
straight legs
& fine noses
like thoroughbred
you are agile and conditioned
high strung
high society
with hat (bridle)
hanging precariously
tipped over one dainty ear
you careened
on heels of crocodiles
on carpeted boulevards
into studio
out of navy blue diane furstenberg
you undressed
splashed onto canvass
and became
immortal.
by Jennifer Wesle
Jennifer Wesle is a Canadian writer/artist/musician. She is working on a poetry manuscript and studying English and Psychology. She leads a semi-nomadic life and is currently living, finding inspiration, learning Italian and eating in Italy.
April 2015 | back-issues, poetry
I know what you mean
about the whiteness of paper,
the inevitability of the sharpened pencil
and the exactitude of the forgotten
line that curves
to the contours of the robin’s egg
discovered beneath a hammock
resting on the freshly cut grass,
speckled for all it’s worth.
You talk about the weight
we all must learn to bear
and the nutmeg
you heard as a child
before you smelled it.
Because so much is lost
in translation
at least in theory,
the way the knuckleball
flutters and resists
understanding and gravity.
The way each Thursday
figures me
in the sparse shade provided by the simile
of a date palm.
by Christopher T. Keaveney
